‘Game Of Thrones’: Winter Is Here, And With It A Delayed Season 7

All good things must end, and so it is that Game of Thrones is getting a shortened run of episodes for its final two seasons, as showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss reiterated last week in an exclusive interview with Deadline. As fans brace themselves for the end of the HBO juggernaut, it’s looking like they’ll have to wait just a bit longer to see how these shorter seasons will play out. The show normally premieres in April, but, said Weiss and Benioff in an interview with the UFC Unfiltered podcast, season seven will be premiering later in 2017 to allow more time to film during colder weather.

“[W]e don’t have an airdate yet, but this year it’ll probably be a bit later, ’cause we’re starting a bit later because at the end of this season,” they confirmed. “‘Winter is here,’ and that means that sunny weather doesn’t really serve our purposes anymore. So we kind of pushed everything down the line, so we could get some grim, grey weather even in the sunnier places that we shoot.”

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No specific premiere date was given in the interview. HBO had no comment on the DBs’ remarks.

Big things are coming for the show’s final run of episodes. Long looming over the show’s tumultuous events, the end of Game of Thrones‘ sixth season finally saw the arrival of winter, which according to the show’s complex mythology is set to be unusually long and bitter. That means the story’s endgame is nigh, as a long winter means the Night King and his army of undead White Walkers will be able to march from the north on Westeros – which is happening, of course, just as Queen Daenerys and her dragons have arrived in the south to conquer the seven kingdoms. See here for a recap of season 6 and where things stand as the fractured kingdom faces down the coming storm.